More folklore accurate names for the genie tribes

While reading Legends of the Fire Spirits by Robert Lebling, I learned than Tunisian folklore tells of genies associated with the air, the sea, and the land. (This is also repeated in Between Sand & Sea for Ars Magica, if you want game-ready details for a "medieval authentic" game.) This inspired me to assign new names to some tribes of genies in the OGL rules, as an optional rule for those who prefer folklore authentic jargon rather than the inventions of Gygax and co.

In the OGL rules, the five tribes of genies are Djinn (air), Efreet (fire), Marid (water), Shaitan (earth), and Jann (n/a). Under this option, the Djinn, Marid, and Shaitan would be renamed Leriah (الرياح), Baharia (بحرية), and Siadna (سيادنا), respectively.

Incubae and succubae

I learned something interesting about incubi and succubi recently. The words themselves are derived from Latin. The stem incub- means "lie above," whereas succub- means "lie below." The endings -a and -us are feminine and masculine, respectively.

So that gives us four demons to work with. The incubus is a masculine demon who lies atop his victim, whereas the incuba is his feminine counterpart. The succuba is a feminine demon who lies below her victim, whereas the succubus is her masculine counterpart.

There is so much more to explore, including nightmares, cambions, malcubi, and more. Unfortunately, I'll have to save those musings for later...

Dragon metamorphosis

I enjoy the opportunities opened by the concept of monster evolution, as much or even more than that opened by spontaneous generation. Curiously, there are already number of stories from around the world in which an animal or a person becomes a dragon.

• The dwarf Fafnir became a dragon as a result of the curse on a treasure hoard.
• A Chinese story recounts that a koi fish spent a century trying to jump a waterfall: when it succeeded it ascended into a dragon, and thus the waterfall was named the Dragon's Gate.
• A Korean story recounts that a serpent found a fallen star, which granted his wish to become a dragon.
• Chinese myth says that pearls are tears of the Moon, and some were taken by dragons. One Chinese story tells of a boy who found a magic pearl that could produce endless rice. When he accidentally consumed it, he became a dragon.
• According to Serbian legend, several animals including carp, snake, ram, and rooster could metamorphose into dragons when they reached a certain age.
• In more modern fantasy fiction like Elizabeth A. Lynn's Dragon's Winter or the Dragon's Gate MUD, dragons are born resembling human beings and become recognizable as dragons as they mature.

On a related note, D&D and derivatives often depict dragons as having age categories. The older the dragon, the higher its CR. Dragons that don't have age categories are screwed out of luck. With monster evolution, that limitation is gone. Now the lowly wyvern can evolve into a higher CR dragon, and high CR dragons may be weakened and reverted to lower CR dragons.

I can't wait to do more thinking on this subject!

My pet peeve: alseids, cecaelia, alacorns, *taurs, and other misused and invented monster names

So a common pet peeve of mine is when Pathfinder bestiaries get etymology and mythology wrong, because this tends to bleed over into discussions of actual mythology and result in tons of misinformation being spread.

Here are a few examples:

• In Greek myth, the alseides are the dryads of groves, who liked pranking travelers. They were not deer-centaurs, that's WarCraft's dryads.
• The cecaelia, an octopus-mermaid, is not a mythological creature. 
• The alacorn, a winged unicorn, is not a mythological creature either. However, the "Ethiopian Pegasus" was a breed of winged horned horse recounted in the natural histories of Pliny.
• The centaurs are self-explanatory, though the term itself is used more freely in Greek myth to refer to more than just the horse/men hybrids. Weirdly, the word taur (literally "bull" in Latin) is used to describes centaurs with non-equine lower halves, even though the word centaur already served that role in Greek myth. E.g. horse-centaur, fish-centaur, bull-centaur, etc.

I don't know why, but I really don't like it when people invent nonsense names when they could just use regular words like "deer-centaur," "octopus-mermaid," "winged unicorn," etc.

Sorry for the repetitive and probably pointless posting. I'll try to do better next time.